Special with a Crippled Heart
by Flarefirered
Summary: Tally saved the world, but who's there to save Tally from herself? Aya can only watch as Tally's broken heart eats at her like uncontrolled nanos. Maybe the only one who can mend Tally's crippled heart is that boy she kissed. Post-Extras. TallyxZane.


**Disclaimer: I do not own own the Uglies series.**

**Detailed summary:**  
><strong><em>"The last time I kissed someone, I wound up watching him die," Tally said simply. "And I was just thinking: Dying's one of those things that can't be fixed. Not by talking about it, not with all the brain surge in the world."<br>_- Tally Youngblood in_ Extras._**

**It's been three months since the Thousand Faces party at the end of _Extras_. Tally and David are still living in the wild, serving as the new Special Circumstances. But Aya and Frizz were wrong about their relationship. Tally isn't ready to forget Zane, and it doesn't seem like she ever will be. She's slowly falling apart and no one seems to be able to do anything about it—not even David. That is, until Aya gets an impossible idea...**

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><p>Tally Youngblood was in the city. Aya's city. And it didn't stop there. Tally Youngblood was at Aya's party.<p>

Or at least, she had been.

Aya was fleeing from an excess of cameras when she entered a seemingly empty room just in time to see David trying to kiss Tally. Tally had pulled away, her flash tattoos spinning wildly, a hand clutching at her dark hair. She'd mumbled some kind of broken apology before fleeing.

Now she was shoving her way through the crowd of people, searching for an empty room in Aya's mansion. People quickly made room for her, afraid that she'd tear them to pieces if they didn't. Aya struggled to follow, stumbling and squeezing her way through the crowd, which weren't quite as quick to part for her.

Eventually, Tally picked a room. She hissed at the few people inside, and they quickly fled. She stepped into the room and slammed the door behind her. Aya ran up to the door, banging her fist against it. "Tally! It's me, Aya. Let me in!"

"Go away!" she snapped.

"Come on, Tally!" Aya pleaded. "Talk to me! Maybe it'll help."

"No."

"Just let me in! _Please?_ Besides, it's my bedroom that you decided to storm into."

Silence. Then the door swung open. "Fine."

Aya smiled and slipped inside, locking the door behind her. She plopped down on her bed, slipping off her flashing heels. As awesome as they were, they really killed her feet. "What happened?"

Tally turned away, crossing her scar-covered arms. "I think you know."

"Kissing?" Aya asked softly. Tally only sighed. "You never did tell me," Aya said. "Who _was_ the last person you kissed?"

Tally looked at her with dark eyes, her cruel-pretty face clouded. "You really want to talk about ancient history?"

Aya shrugged. "Yeah." She was getting tired of Tally Youngblood's life being such a mystery.

Tally barked a laugh. "It's a long story."

"I have time," Aya said.

Tally stared out over the horizon, her eyes far away, longing. She didn't offer anything, so Aya decided that she needed a little encouragement. "What was his name?"

"Zane." The word was only a soft whisper of breath.

Aya watched Tally's face. She'd never seen Tally like this before, her expression so unguarded and disheartened. She looked like she wanted to cry.

"Um, so how did you meet him?"

Tally glanced back at Aya, her black eyes holding a different kind of intensity. Wistful. Emotional. "Back then, in New Pretty Town, the pretties all formed cliques. Zane started the Crims. That was the group Shay-la and Peris were in, so I joined too. At this costume bash, I saw someone dressed as a Special Circumstances agent, so I followed." Tally snorted. "Turned out to be this Smokey I knew named Croy. He told me he'd leave something for me at Valentino 317. I was still a total bubblehead, so of course I forgot about it that same night.

"Then Zane asked me to have breakfast with him at a pleasure garden." The cruel, harsh edge to Tally's voice and face softened. "He helped make me bubbly. We kissed and…" She trailed off, a lost expression on her face.

"And then what?" Aya asked, unable to help herself.

"Then I remembered David. When you get all bubbly, you remembered things sometimes," Tally said. "Did I ever tell you I kissed David back when I was an ugly? At the Smoke?"

"Really?" Aya asked. "So why don't you do that now?"

"It's not the same." Tally looked away. So quietly that Aya couldn't be sure she heard right, Tally whispered, "He isn't Zane."

"So what happened after you remembered David?" Aya probed.

"We started talking about the Smoke. Then I remembered that Croy'd left me something. So we tied our interface rings to some reeds," Tally said, smiling a little. "Like we all did when we were uglies, and went to Valentino. Turns out, there was no Valentino 317 anymore. It was an elevator. And we didn't have our interface rings so we couldn't call it.

"So we went to get in through the roof. And then we found a lock on the door." Tally grinned slightly. "The key was on top of the transmission tower. It was a pretty bubbly climb. Especially when I almost fell off."

"Wait, you two climbed up there as bubbleheads?" Aya asked in surprise.

Tally glared at her. "Zane was never really a bubblehead," she snapped, her Cutter features abruptly turning sharp and special again.

"Sorry," Aya said. "Keep going."

Tally rolled her eyes. "So then we got the key and opened up the place." Her flash tattoos started to spin faster. "We found two pills," she said, her hands curling into claws. "And a note from myself. The cure to the bubblehead lesions.

"I was too scared to take them alone," Tally laughed bitterly. "So we shared them. And I got lucky."

"How?"

"Zane got the nano pill and I got the one that stopped the nanos. So Zane's brain got all messed up because the nanos didn't stop reproducing and kept eating up his brain. We went—well, I took—him to the hospital after a particularly bad attack. I guessed someone noticed and stopped the nanos.

"Course we didn't know that, and we had interface cuffs. So we found a way to get them off and left for the New Smoke." Tally sighed. "I got separated, but I eventually found them. Turns out they stuck a tracker in Zane's tooth, so that's how they found us. I stayed with him when everyone else left, and Special Circumstances got us. They took Zane to the hospital and _kind of _fixed him. Shay got to me and made me Special. A Cutter."

Tally ran a finger along the scars on her arm, looking disgusted. "Zane was crippled when I next saw him. Shaky and unspecial."

Aya's eyes widened. "And your Special wiring…"

Tally nodded bitterly. "Made me disgusted by him. I couldn't watch his infirmity. It revolted me. So Shay and I came up with a plan to let him escape, and then get caught so that Dr. Cable would make him special too.

"Worked real well. Shay and I got into a fight and we split up. I stayed with Zane and the other Crims. Zane tricked me somehow," Tally said, her lip twitching up. "And we talked…" She choked off.

"And kissed," Aya finished.

Tally nodded, her black eyes shining. "And kissed. But then I felt his shaking and I almost threw up in his face. My sneak suit stabbed his hands with spikes and then I jumped off a cliff and into an ocean. That was the last time we talked."

She was quiet for a while. "He arrived at Diego and went to the hospital. Then the war started, and after the first attack, we found him in the hospital." Tally's voice was tight, as if she were choking on tears. "He asked them to repair his motor skills, to make them even better than they used to be. So that I wouldn't see him as weak. His body rejected the brain tissue during the war, so no one could help him. The war that _I _started.

"So he died. And it was my fault…" Tally's voice choked off and Aya saw a single tear leave her eye. Tally touched it with her finger and stared at it. "Specials don't cry," she whispered. "Except for me."

Aya didn't know what to say.

"I'd give anything to be with him again. To tell him that I always loved him. That I still do." Tally paused, looking pained. "I never even told him 'I love you.'" More tears trickled down her flawless cheeks. "And now it's too late."

Silence hung over them for a long moment. Then, Tally wiped the tears from her face and stood.

"Tally…" Aya started to say.

"Don't," Tally said, the razor-edge in her voice returning. "I screwed up. It was all my fault. I deserve to be miserable."

"No you don't!" Aya protested. "You're the one who saved the world, and you're the one who keeps it safe. You don't deserve to be miserable!"

Tally only laughed harshly. "It doesn't really matter what you think, Aya," she said, bitterness lacing her pained tone. "Because dying's the one thing that can't be fixed. So what are you going to do about it?"

Wiping a final tear from her eye, Tally opened the window and jumped out. Aya didn't try to stop her. Because really, what _could_ she do? Tally didn't deserve to be miserable, but if even David couldn't cheer her up, what could?

Aya could only think of one thing. And unfortunately, that one thing was gone forever.

Or was it?

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><p><strong>Author's Note: Interested? Hooked? Vaguely intrigued? Review and let me know what you think!<strong>


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